CONTEMPORARY ARTS THEATRE
"The Biggest Thief in Town." By Dalton Trumbo. (Duchess.) LI% Mr. George Shiels's The Passing Day, The Biggest Thief in Town is a long joke about avarice,- hinging on the death of
a small- town plutocrat who subsequently proves to be penniless. The difference is that, while The Passing Day concentrates on the events leading up to death, Mr. Dalton Trumbo's' play deals with the events immediately following it ; with the result that Mr. Shiels has written a comedy, where Mr. Trumbo, having a corpse on his hands, has been forced to write a farce. He breaks—not to say excavates— new ground in making his hero an undertaker, who, spurred by visions of an opulent interment, prematurely kidnaps a dying millionaire. Mr. Hartley Power, who plays the body-snatcher, has been quoted in the Press as having said that it was "certainly stimulating to be in a play dealing with serious things that affect ordinary people "—an alarming point of view which few people outside the embalming game Will share. •
Mr. Power, at all events, seems miscast. The author envisaged his undertaker as a gentle creature, transformed by poverty into a pirate. Mr. Power, whose style is cigar-chewing and burly, has played so many stage pirates that the habit has stuck ; and no transformation takes place. At one point, lost in wonder at his own exploit; he describes himself as " a gambling ghoul"; and when I remember the emphatic relish with which Mr. Power delivers the line, I am quite unable to understand the critic who picturesquely summed up his performance as " an adorable mixture of tenderness and mischief." Mr. Power plays throughout in his own armour- plated manner, and does so admirably ; it is merely that he appears a wolf, and the part called for a lamb.
Apart from this piece of casting, Mr. Peter Cotes (who both directed and presented the play) has made few mistakes. I would single out Mr. Launce Maraschal, who quietly plays " straight man " to Mr. Power's broadsides, for particular steadfastness under fire. The play, inventive and thin-spun by turns, can be safely recom- mended to anyone who missed Arsenic and Old Lace, its superior in both hecrophily and wit.
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